Reaching for the Golden Ring
by Still Evil Flame
Summary: Yachiru's unique outlook on the world comes to light as she gets older. A mission with Captain Hitsgaya in the world of the living shows him just how unique. Then shows her just what his intentions really are.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: None of them belong to me, sadly. Thank you Tite Kubo for letting me play with your toys. I didn't break any of them, the Renji was that way when I found them.

A/N : Takes place at some undetermined length of time after the established storyline. But just for the sake of discussion lets just say that it's long enough that the exact details are history, yet not far enough in the future that we have all sorts of changes from the present. Whatever. You know what mean. I'm picturing them around 15 and 17.

Yachiru's POV

I was never in a hurry to grow up. Why should I be? I had everything I could have wanted already. I was a Vice Captain, I had the best captain ever and of course, the Eleventh was the best family I could have asked for. Unconventional, yes, but that made it no less perfect in my eyes.

When that growing up finally did happen, it wasn't always easy. Ken-chan was a pain every step of the way. Not that he was _all_ over-protective father figure... at least not all the time. He teased me about my boobs and about being too girly when I let my hair grow out. He wanted to know when I was going to get boy crazy and start acting more like Yumichika. Once he figured out that nothing much was changing other than my size and the occasional ability to be serious, things settled back down.

Who knows how long things would stay the same, but for the moment, life had settled into a nice simple routine. The Eleventh squad had a capable vice captain, I was learning tons more things than even I had managed to learn by example and I was still more than happy with the way my life was playing out.

Not that everyone was content to leave it at that. As long as I could remember, people had looked at me speculatively and wondered about my future. Would I turn out to live up to my potential? Would I grow into my role as Vice Captain? Would I ever get a sense of direction and stop riding around on Ken-chan's shoulders?

We're still waiting on those last two. Ikkaku says I can get lost in my own bathroom. Ken-chan says I have to start walking when I get too heavy. For the record, _neither_ of those two things has happened yet. Just so you know.

I was hanging out on Ken-chan's shoulder, and we were on our way back from some sort of meeting about something. Honestly, I can't remember what every meeting we have to go to is about. Our squad doesn't have much to worry about unless someone's attacking, or amassing for an attack, or Ryoka are invading the Seireitei, or rogue captains are up to no good. So, I tend to zone out sometimes unless it directly concerns us. Since none of those things happen all that often, I think it was safe to say it was just some sort of blah blah blah meeting. Maybe Captain Clownface had been rambling on about something new he dreamed up. That _does_ happen a lot.

Then Ken-chan stopped walking and I quit thinking about what I was going to have for dinner and rambling about how it was time Ken-chan had another barbecue. I peeked over his shoulder and there stood Captain Hitsugaya. I didn't remember him being at the meeting, and I probably would have noticed. Honestly, I don't think he'd grown as much as I had. Then again, they do say that girls grow faster.

He's another of those things that people speculate about when my name and future come up. For some reason, they just think it would be so _cute_ and just oh so _sweet_ if we liked each other. As if. I do not consider the only viable option in my age bracket as being cute or sweet. Honestly, I would rather eat dirt. Sure, he's a captain and therefore, I couldn't kick his ass with one hand tied behind my back, and that is a plus. He's also so serious all the time that it makes my head hurt. There's also the chip he carries on his shoulder that must weigh more than I do.

He's young and people use words like precocious, prodigy and genius. He's also painfully proper, acts oh so loftily better than everyone and seems kind of awkward. I really used to tease him a lot when I was younger. I thought he was silly and went out of my way to embarrass him and tease him. I don't anymore. It just made everyone smile and think it meant I liked him. Ugh, that is not something I want. So, I just used a little psychology and gave the same as I got from him. I can be proper and act like I have a stick up my ass too, you know.

Poor Hitsugaya. He actually looked a little rough. Like a hollow had been chewing on him, or maybe Rangiku, though why she would have been chewing on him I couldn't guess. You never can tell with Rangiku. "Captain Kenpachi, could I have a moment of your time? I'd like to ask a favor of you."

Ooh, asking Ken-chan for a favor could be good. Maybe he'd ask for help with whatever had been beating him up. We might get to fight something good if it was rumpling up the Tenth's captain!

I crossed my arms on Ken-chan's shoulder and got all settled in to listen without saying a word. It's proper etiquette for vice captains to keep their mouths firmly closed unless captains address them personally. None of my usual commentary.

Hitsugaya looked right at me. Oh, can we not speak in front of the subordinates?

"Actually, I was hoping that you could spare Vice Captain Kusajishi."

Ken-chan glanced back over his shoulder at me. "Can I spare you?"

I swatted a spike of his hair out of my way with a jingle. "Yumi can finish the paperwork." I slid down to my feet gracefully with a jingle of my own. For my last birthday, Yumi and Ikkaku had given me a pair of anklets with the same bells that Ken-chan wore. It was their devout hope I would be less stealthy with them on. It hadn't made that much of a difference, but I really liked the bells anyway.

I stepped under Ken-chan's arm and bowed formally to Hitsugaya. "Yes sir, Captain Hitsugaya?"

It almost sounded like he sighed under his breath. "I am going to the world of the living on a mission to track some unusual activity."

Activity? "What kind of activity? Hollows? Arrancar?"

"At this point, we're unsure, but it needs to be investigated and to have a close eye on it." He looked right past me again and up at Ken-chan. How annoying. "I think your vice captain would be a very valuable resource to this particular mission. Rangiku speaks highly of her stealth abilities."

Ken-chan made his thoughtful noise. "The experience might do her good. She could use some independent action."

"We'll be leaving as soon as the arrangements are made." With a nod Hitsugaya, turned on his heel and stalked off.

Ken-chan smiled down at me. "You know, I think you're taller than he is."

I made a face at him and stuck out my tongue. "His hair is taller."

'Hm," he kept walking like we had never been interrupted and I had to scramble to catch him and jump on his back. "If that boy so much as looks at you in the wrong way, just let me know and I'll gut him like a carp."

I laughed and hugged his neck. "Captain Hitsugaya has never done anything improper in his life. And Ken-chan? I can gut him all by myself if I want."

"I'm sure, but I would enjoy it more."

~*~

I kind of hurried to get this posted for her birthday. I promise there is more in the works very soon. Please review and be kind. I haven't posted any fiction in years anywhere and I'm probably rusty.


	2. Chapter 2

Why me was one of the great imponderables. There had to be other vice captains that he could have taken instead. Probably better ones that were easier for him to get along with. Renji, or Rangiku. We could have loaned him Ikkaku or Yumi. They're both very good at the world of the living blending in thing. Me, I was barely familiar with anything other than human candy and that pink hair really isn't normal. Maybe Snowball had forgotten that, and I didn't call him Snowball. Captain Hitsugaya.

I was very good at sneaky undertakings. Anyone who could successfully build a secret installation under the Kuchiki residence gets full marks for underhanded sneakings. The whole blending thing would be a challenge and of course, I could get help from any number of people, including Strawberry. It would make Ken-chan happy if I at least popped in to say hi for him.

First stop in the world of the living was the Urahara Shoten. The moment I walked in, I knew this was a place I could fall in love with. There was candy. Of course I had to sample the moment I set eyes on it. I had the first piece unwrapped and nearly to my mouth when a huge hand closed around my wrist and stopped its progress. I'd perfected the proper counter for that attack _years_ before. I moved my head to nip the candy out of my fingers and then turned to face my opponent.

He was huge, and I mean Ken-chan huge. He was almost the same height and probably had about ten pounds on my captain. That is a feat, let me tell you. I blinked at him, tucking the candy in my cheek for safe keeping. "Hi."

Captain Hitsugaya quickly intervened. I whimsically wondered who the worry in his expression was for. "Tessai, we're going to need your boss." He paused and looked at me with that expression I was starting to get very used to. It was slightly pained and cautious. "And start a tab for Vice Captain Kusajishi."

Tessai finally let go of my wrist and looked at me appraisingly for a moment. "This is Kenpachi's little Vice Captain?" It really was so lovely to get talked over all the time.

Hitsugaya nodded.

The big man grunted and went off to find his boss. "First piece is on me then."

I sucked on my candy thoughtfully and looked around, looking for my next prey. Chocolate was messy, and I'd probably get it all over. Gum gets in your hair, ask Ken-chan. Suckers would take too long. Ooh, were those mints?

Hitsugaya cleared his throat. "About why we're here," he began. Drat, candy had to wait. I really wanted to hear this part.

"Well, well! Isn't this a pleasant surprise!" Urahara strode in, complete with hat and cane just like everyone had ever described him. "I suppose the two of you are here to do more than just sample my wares."

Hitsugaya looked more thoroughly annoyed than he had before. I was starting to think that judging his moods worked strictly on a scale of how thoroughly pissed off he was at the moment. Amusing. I wanted to know if he could do the bulging vein in his temple thing like Ikkaku could.

I smiled oh so sweetly at Urahara. "I'll take one of everything."

The old lech wriggled his eyebrows at me. "I do hope that includes me."

I giggled because it was cute and I knew he was only playing. Rangiku had told me on good authority that he was madly in love with Strawberry and wouldn't even seriously look at anyone else. I wondered if Hitsugaya knew about that. He moved closer, his sleeve brushing against mine and I literally felt the air around him drop a few more degrees. "Vice Captain Kusajishi will need a gigai. I will just go collect mine."

Urahara watched the captain stalk into the storeroom thoughtfully. "He's wound a little more tightly than normal." Then he turned to beam at me brightly. "But aren't you turning into quite the little stunner. Here for long? And what shall we dress you in?"

I wasn't sure which was stranger, gigias or human clothes. Both were strange and more than a little uncomfortable. Livable, but weird. I was hoping that I wouldn't have to get too comfortable with either. Maybe it was just the short skirt that bothered me. It barely seemed to cover the essentials, but humans might have different ideas as to what you could show off.

Hitsugaya returned wearing a tight black shirt with some sort of silvery zippers on the front and tight blue pants with the knees all worn through. I looked at him a moment longer and then realized what was really weird. "Captain Hitsugaya, are you wearing eye liner?"

Urahara looked up from putting the finishing touches on my hair. I don't know why he insisted on doing it himself. I can manage my own hair after all. "So he is. Nice touch."

"It's a certain human style that helps my hair blend in better. It's called emo."

Urahara muttered around a mouthful of hairpins he tucked between his lips. "It also helps make his eyes look devastatingly gorgeous and causes girls' panties to fall off."

I hoped not. Those panties were almost all that was left between me and the world.

Then Hitsugaya got his first good look at me. Urahara had assured me that my costume was very common and wouldn't cause any comment. Girls who appeared my age wore this uniform to school every day. You would think that the tenth captain would know that. He had spent a lot of time here. "You realize this is Kenpachi's... she is practically his _daughter_!"

Urahara dusted his hands off. "Done... and I can't help it if hemlines are shorter this year. Do try to keep up with the times, Toshiro."

Yup, he could do the vein thing really, really well. "That's Captain Hitsugaya! And he entrusted her to me! Me. When he kills someone for being responsible for her walking around looking like that, I'm going to be dead!"

Urahara smiled and flicked open his fan. "How is that my problem?"

Hitsugaya pointed at me in a very rude way. "Schoolgirls do not wear their shirts all tied up so their stomachs show."

I put my hands over my stomach and frowned. "They don't?"

He took a step closer and turned almost as white as his hair. "She's showing almost as much breast as Matsumoto and she doesn't have as much to start with!"

Urahara blinked and nearly flash stepped behind the nearest cover.

Hitsugaya never saw my slap coming until it connected with his cheek. "I beg your pardon?"I asked in a deadly soft voice.

Urahara cleared his throat and slinked toward the door. "I'm just going to leave the two of you to discuss this privately."

The captain stared at me and then carefully felt the livid red hand print on his cheek. "I..."

"Am an insensitive ass?" I helpfully finished for him.

"Um..." He stared at me completely nonplussed.

I nodded and slung the cute little plush pink cat backpack I had gotten from Urahara over my shoulder. "Apology accepted. Now, what are we looking for?"

"Aren't you going to... change?"

As I walked out of the shop, I untied the shirt and tucked it in efficiently, doing up a couple more buttons. "Are we here to work or are we here to play fashion show?"


	3. Chapter 3

There was a long pause of us walking through the city before he answered. I almost hoped he was intentionally letting me lead. Maybe I was going in the right direction. On second thought, I hoped I got him horribly lost, so lost that he had to give up and ask for directions. I've never met a man yet that would give up gracefully and admit they were lost until they had nearly starved to death or really had to piss.

"Vice Captain Kusajishi, I should never have..."

"No you shouldn't have, but you did, I smacked you, forgave you and it was done. Let it go. Now what are we looking for? Please let me find something to fight!"

He skipped ahead of me a step to stop in my path. I could have sidestepped him, or stiff armed him out of my way. For that matter I could have flash stepped halfway across town and hidden from him for hour, but Eleventh squad doesn't back down from a fight. Maybe that was what Hitsugaya wanted. I crossed my arms and waited.

He let out a long sigh and ran a hand through his hair. It looked like someone petting an albino hedgehog. "Kusajishi-kun, I'm sorry. Please let me say it. It was insensitive and I of all people should know what it is like when people make comments about someone without thinking."

Aw, I almost regretted calling him a hedgehog. "Thank you, Captain Hitsugaya."

There was another of his pauses and then he nodded. "All right. We're here to track the source of some suspicious gigai and artifacts that have been found in the world of the living."

I immediately turned to go back to the Urahara Shoten. Hitsugaya caught me by the arm. "It wasn't him. In fact, Urahara was the one that first reported them."

"Then what are we looking for exactly?"

"Look in your bag. There should be a tracker in there. We can look for their reiatsu and narrow it down from there."

The tracker was the guise of a cellphone. Actually, it was a cellphone too. It was one of Captain Clownface's better ones. I wondered if I could call Ken-san and check in, or remind Yumi to go feed Byakushi's fishes for me. Maybe later when I had a chance.

I checked out all the nice little tracking features and saw that there was nothing to track. Nothing. Not a blip of what it was calibrated to look for at all. I whacked it against the bottom of my shoe just to see if it was working.

"That would be why the Eleventh has the highest equipment budget of any squad?" Hitsugaya asked dryly.

"We get the defective stuff. Everyone knows that."

"Hm, I wonder. You seem to have a habit of smacking anything that doesn't perform the way you want it to."

"Not everything. Just the defective stuff. Where are we going anyway?"

He looked into the distance for a moment. "There is one place that I thought we should go. It makes a very good vantage point. I'll show you, if you can keep up."

I caught a glimpse of a smile before he was off and running. Not to be out done or left behind, I tightened the straps of my backpack and followed, catching him and effortlessly keeping pace beside him as we ran. The wind dragged my hair out behind me, whipping it like a flag as I matched his every move, seeing the whole city around us in flashes and snapshots as we whizzed past.

At last, he stopped to flop down on a low wall, catching his breath and leaning back against his hands. "We made it."

I sat beside him, smoothing my skirt under me carefully. The view grabbed me. The whole town was laid out before us, the sun sinking down behind it, making the river and glass glitter everywhere with colored sparkles. "It's... very pretty."

Hitsugaya pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around them, getting serious and quiet again. "Yes."

I settled in silence beside him, content to just share the view with him. One of the most important things I had learned from Ken-chan was that sometimes you had to just sit still and be quiet. Listen and watch, he told me. I listened. I heard the crickets in the grass begin to chirp as the light faded. I watched Hitsugaya and knew he saw something in the setting sun that I didn't see. I felt the slight chill on the breeze as it curled around him and wondered if he felt the cold too.

As the sun went down and the stars appeared, I tilted my face back and looked up at the sky, looking for familiar patterns. I'd never known the proper constellations, so I had made up my own. Ken-chan had gone along with my game sometimes. I think he even remembered a few of them.

"They're different, you know, like the moon." Hitsugaya's voice was very low and soft, almost a whisper. He seemed closer too, nearly brushing my shoulder again.

I looked closer. They were different. No Blood Puddle. No Silly Hollow. No Broken Sword. It made me sad to think that Ken-chan and I were under different stars. It was lonely.

"But," Hitsugaya leaned closer and pointed. "right over there, is a group they call the Hunter. It's supposed to look like a Quincy, or so I'm told."

I squinted and tried to see what he was pointing at, trying to look straight up his arm. His hair brushed against my cheek as I shook my head. It wasn't as pokey as I thought it would be. "I don't know... I can't see it."

I was still looking at the stars, trying to find the Quincy. Maybe I could see a bow. He looked lopsided though. I turned to point out what I thought could be a leg and found Hitsugaya looking at me very intently and twining part of my hair around his finger.

I might have been a little too much in his space. In fact, it has been well documented that I have no sense of personal space at all. Either way, it was very uncomfortable. I pulled away, smoothing my hair and holding it against my neck. "We haven't found out anything, so we should go."

He opened his mouth, on the verge of saying something when the phone started chirping. It took me a moment to figure out what it was and scramble to dig it out of the backpack again.

"Well?" He asked. "What is it?"

I frowned at the screen, going over the information again. "I... don't know. For a moment there were very good, very strong readings on the reiatsu, then they just disappeared again." I looked up at him. "Like the light from a door that opens and then closes again."

Hitsugaya growled softly under his breath. "Someone's shielding then. They're hiding whatever it is they're up to and we're only finding the evidence and slips."

I nodded to the phone. "But we can narrow it down with this."

"If they are staying in one area."

"And the only way to find out is wait and see."

He rose to his feet and dusted himself off. "This could take a while."

I stood and smoothed my short skirt down again, shivering from how the wall had leeched the heat from my body, or maybe it had been Hitsugaya.

He picked up on the shiver at once. "You should have said something if you were cold. We'll go back at once. We can keep an eye on the readings and track them tomorrow. But only after we take you shopping." He looked positively dreadful as he said the last word, as if it was a fate worse than death.

"Honestly, I'm fine. It's barely even nippy. I've been cold before and it hasn't hurt me a bit." But I was tired. Not that I would admit it to him. "Where are we staying by the way?"

The Captain looked more than pained, he looked positively morose. "Where else? With Urahara."


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Just a quick thank you to everyone who's reviewed or dropped me a line. Thank you so much. You've made my week!

Hitsugaya's plan for dealing with our host seemed to be avoiding him as much as possible. That meant we sneaked in after he had went to bed and tried to get out in the morning before he woke up. At least the first morning, we proved unsuccessful. We were still munching away on rice when Urahara sashayed in wearing a violently purple kimono with red koi on it. "Morning, children."

Hitsugaya scowled at him over the rim of his bowl. "We are not children. We are a captain and an vice captain of Gotei 13."

Urahara waved his objection away as he poured himself a cup of coffee. "I have sandals older than the two of you put together." Just the first sip of coffee seemed to improve his mood. "And just what hijinx do the two of you have planned for today?"

"Shopping," I replied, drinking the last of my tea. "Then we have readings to track down and check out."

"Yes, but first, we're getting proper clothes for Vice Captain Kusajishi." Hitsugaya was giving Urahara a positively evil look. Was it really so horrible that I was showing a little much skin? Actually, since I had gotten used to it, it was kind of fun. Plus, I had been researching on the tv and in the magazines I found in Jinta's room under the mattress. I really did seem to be in the current style.

"Dress her however you like, Toshiro, if it's that important. Could I suggest something wool?" The old shopkeeper looked amused. "You're leaking reiatsu like a tea strainer. I'm going to have to fire up the furnace if you stay much longer."

"Captain Hitsugaya!" It just seemed to come out of him reflexively in response to his own name. He slammed his cup down. "Not that it is any of your business at all."

Urahara leaned over the table to peer into his cup and tap the contents with the end of his fan. "It is when you're icing over the breakfast tea."

Hitsugaya stood without sparing so much as another glance at the other man and walked to the door. "Kusajishi-kun, are you ready to go?"

I looked back and forth between them. It occurred to me that there was more to the conversation that I was getting. Hey, I'm used to Ken-san. He leaks more reiatsu sleeping than most people do in bankai. I began to get the idea that something might be wrong with my Captain Hedgehog.

I didn't hear a word of what Urahara was calling out after us. I followed Hitsugaya, watching him closely and trying to figure out exactly what could be wrong with him. Was that why he'd requested a Vice Captain to come with him? Was there some reason he couldn't handle something on his own? Was he sick or nursing some hidden injury? That could explain why someone who usually had very fine control was leaking reiatsu.

It would be intrusive to ask, but then again, if we were to be put in a battle situation, I had a right to know about a potential weakness in the person who would have my back. "Is there something wrong with you, Captain?"

"What?" He stopped walking to frown at me. "No, there's nothing wrong."

"Urahara implied..."

Hitsugaya cut me off short. "Urahara implies a lot of things, mostly for his own amusement. This time, he did so at my expense. I shouldn't have let him annoy me. I shouldn't have lost control."

"You murdered harmless breakfast drinks. I think control was lost."

He sighed wearily. "He's discovered something that makes me very uncomfortable. He'll exploit it ruthlessly because there aren't many things that do."

I frowned. "What is it?"

He shook his head and started walking again. "Come on. I'll take you to Matsumoto's favorite store. She can spend fortunes there."

That I didn't hound him relentlessly until he confessed proves that I have more restraint than anyone gives me credit for. Instead, I went on about the business of getting my wardrobe straightened out. Evidentially, Jinta and Urahara shared some kind of fetish for mostly undressed schoolgirls. Far less disturbing in Jinta's case since they were still nearly his age.

Luckily for me, the salesman in the shop remembered Rangiku and was more than happy to help her 'little sister'. Hey, it wasn't really a lie. We were sisters of a sort. In any case, in short order, I was strolling back to where Hitsugaya was waiting on a bench, dressed quite nicely in jeans and a lovely little top and yes, I had my sweater all ready for the next change in climate. I might have had at least a few extra things in the bags I was carrying.

I handed him a bag without thinking. "Now, can we finally go find something to fight with?"

He looked at the bag like I'd handed him a dead mackerel. "What am I supposed to do with this? We are not carrying around your shopping. Why did you get so much?"

"Because... I've got Ken-chan's credit card."

"And that means?"

I looked at him sadly. Poor thing. No wonder Rangiku takes advantage of him so easily. He just doesn't get a clue. "That I have to spend as much as I can before he thinks to tell me not to, or to ask for it back!"

He pulled out his phone and dialed without answering me and spoke to someone quickly. Within seconds, one of the locally stationed shinigami appeared and whisked away all my bags, leaving me empty handed and blinking at him. Hitsugaya tucked his hands in his pockets. "What are you supposed to be doing again?" Who knew that he was really like a captain after all? He had the high handed taking charge thing down. I would have never guessed.

"Oh... right." I dug out my tracker thingie and began going over the readings again. "If I'm reading this correctly, and I really think I am, our reiatsu surge came from the other side of town."

Hitsugaya leaned over my shoulder to check my readings as well. For someone with propriety issues, he was getting very cozy at taking up my personal space. "You're right." His breath tickled my ear. I heard a hint of something like humor in his voice. "Ikakku called to warn me around your sense of direction this morning. He said to double check any directions you gave. "

He gave me an enigmatic look as he started off in the right direction. "He also gave me another warning."

Baldy was going to get it as soon as I got back. Imagine, one of your own squad calling another captain to warn them about your faults. I don't care if he did half raise me and bought me my first tampons, it was just something you did _not_ do! "What? What did he say?"

I caught up with him in a few steps, catching him by the arm. "Captain Hitsugaya, please." I may have given him a bit of my devastatingly effective pleading kitten eyes. "This mission is important to me. I... I want to be trusted on my own by them."

Maybe I'd applied a bit too much of the kitten power. He looked dazed and wide eyed, sort of like Byakushi the time I'd used his royal seal to give Renji a new tattoo on his forehead while he was napping in a Vice Captain's meeting. In fact, Hitsugaya didn't snap out of it. I had to shake him a little. Then he went back to frowning.

"They trust you on your own. The impression they give is that I am only going to get in your way once we get in a battle situation."

It would have been very impolite to say 'well, duh' and in any case, it would just be Eleventh squad bravado. I have a very healthy respect for Hitsugaya's bankai and overall skill. "Then, what are they worried about?"

"Something they can't compete with. Someone stealing away your affections."

"Well that's just silly, because who..." My brain caught up with the rest of me. Hitsugaya was giving me a very cautious but hopeful look. A 'well duh' moment of another kind. "But..."

"But what?"

"But what about Momo?" Wasn't it common knowledge that he and Momo were... something?

"What does Momo have to do with anything?"

"I thought you and she were, you know..."

"I'm not going to talk about Momo."

"Okay, no Momo." I was racing through all the objections in my head, trying to find one of them that he would understand. Time to go into all my carefully constructed reasons _Why Captain Hitsugaya Is Completely Unacceptable By Yachiru Kusajishi_ and why the very idea annoyed me. "It's... cute! People expect it! You're so..."

His eyes narrowed slightly, and whoops, there went the air temperature again. "I'm what?"

My phone started shrieking in my bag again. I was actually so thrilled to hear it I could have kissed it. I frantically dug it out of my backpack. "We've got live readings! Same location as before." Without a backwards glance, I took to the rooftops determined to get to the bottom of the real reason we were here.

Oh, and I was not running away from the mushy emotional stuff. Eleventh never runs away, we just pursue the battles we prefer. I definitely prefer not to talk about me and Captain Hitsugaya.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: Here's where things get a little crack inspired. I really should apologize, shouldn't I?

I was crouched low behind a roof line, watching the building that contained the reiatsu readings that were causing the trouble. It appeared to be a mostly abandoned storefront. Though just what sort of store would be here in the middle of warehouses and a big bunch of nowhere, I couldn't decide. Captain Hitsugaya was out of breath when he finally caught up to me and crept up to my shoulder. I couldn't help the small feeling of pride, that I was that much better at flash step than he was.

"What have you seen?"

"Nothing," I whispered back. "The reiatsu had faded by the time I got here, but there are traces left. This is where they came from."

His eyes were filled with frustration, but he nodded and turned back to survey the building. "I will say this. They have the worst timing of anyone I have ever seen, whoever they are."

As we watched, a lone figure walked out of the shop, straightening his clothes and running his hand through his hair. I squinted and hissed softly under my breath.

"Arrancar," Hitsugaya confirmed softly after taking the phone from me and doing a bit of poking around. "Then it's true. Someone is supplying them gigai. Inferior quality, but very close to untraceable."

We slid down, out of sight and carefully masked out presence. "Course of action, Captain?" I asked softly. He was in charge, though to me, the best thing to do was attack, kill the arrancar, then go after whoever was helping them. They should probably be killed too, just in case.

"Let him go. I'll have someone tail him and see what he is up to. That isn't our concern." I started to complain heatedly as to that point but he held up a hand and continued. "Our concern is whoever is behind this and how we can get in there to get a closer look. Did you notice the window sign on the shop?"

I hadn't. What sort of shop was it? Did it matter if they were in league with the Arrancar?

A quick peek back over the roof was in order. "Body Piercings? What're those? I thought that getting pierced by anything was something you tried to avoid."

Apparently not, we'd learned from Urahara. Back at his shop, he explained to us that the humans were quite taken with hanging bits of metal through all sorts of body parts.

"If they can stick a ring or bar through it, they will," he assured us from behind his fan. "Actually, take a close look around the seireitei. There are a few examples in the ranks as well."

My mind scrabbled about frantically. There were shinagami with things all poked through them? Who? I didn't remember any such thing. I would have noticed right? It sounded strange enough to be something out of Captain Clownface's squad though.

Hitsugaya went very pale and cleared his throat as he flipped through the magazine that Urahara had given him with examples in it. There must have been something pretty interesting in there. He held it out of my reach when I tried to grab it. "We'll need to contact Gotei 13 and get further orders before we proceed."

"Give me that," I demanded, making another grab at it.

"Absolutely not." He held it up over his head and stepped back.

I tackled him and wrestled the magazine out of his grasp, sitting on his chest to keep him still while I flipped through the pages. He went utterly still in shock and stared at me, which was no fun at all. Usually, if I had to fight to get something away from someone, they kept fighting to get it back. Poor Hitsugaya. He really did need lessons on how to do anything fun.

"OOH!" I exclaimed after a few pages. "Problem solved. We don't have to get orders. I know exactly what to do. I'll just go get one of these." I pointed triumphantly at the picture and beamed at them both.

Urahara had withdrawn out of the range of flailing limbs but leaned back in to see the picture. "My my... nice choice. Discreet, but very naughty. I approve."

Hitsugaya squirmed under me. "Can't breathe," he wheezed.

Oops. I hopped off and showed him my picture.

His brows knit together in the most fierce frown I had seen yet. "Absolutely not! I can't bring you back from a mission and inform Captain Kenpachi that anyone violated your..." He had to fortify himself to say it. "belly button."

I was almost amused. "Hey, weren't you the one who compared my breasts to your Vice Captain's and found them lacking? Now you can't even talk about my stomach?"

His eyes went huge. "I didn't find them lacking! There is nothing lacking about your breasts!" He blushed brilliantly. "And I should never have mentioned them in the first place. Them or any of your other parts."

I would have kept right on needling him. It was just too much fun. I bet I could get that vein in his temple to show up again if I kept trying, but Urahara cleared his throat. "Sorry to interrupt, but it is a good idea, Yachiru going under cover that is. She looks innocent enough to anyone that doesn't know her, either personally or by reputation."

That had probably been meant as an insult. Hm, I still considered it a compliment. I was never above using my notorious reputation for being ruthless and annoying if it would help my cause.

Hitsugaya stubbornly shook his head, setting himself upright again and brushing himself off. "I'm not doing anything without further orders in this case. I will not order Vice Captain Kusajishi into a situation I'm not sure about."

Urahara flicked his fan at him dismissively. "The worst that could happen was she'd get a dink in her gigai and we'd get some idea of what they're doing and who it is doing."

Hitsugaya set his jaw. "Absolutely not."

I found the pictures that had caused his reaction. My eyes widened and then I grinned like an idiot. "Holy Hueco Mundo! This guy has a ring in his _dick_! I bet you just looking at this would make Ikkaku pass out!"

There was dead silence for a moment while both men looked at me in complete horror. It might have been awkward. Possibly even painful on the socially unacceptable scale for either of them. To me it was just another example of how my upbringing just made me weird. I carefully put the magazine down and took two large steps away from it.

Then Urahara smiled brightly. "All righty then! I'll just go see about that gate."

Hitsugaya ran a hand through his hair. I'd pegged that as one of his habits to compose himself. That didn't mean it wasn't still cute in the petting a baby hedgehog way, just that I'd figured it out. There are a lot of things that you can tell about people by their habits and tells. " Kusajishi-kun, I wanted to talk to you before I left. About what we were talking about before."

Damn, I knew what he was getting at. As much as I would love to blithely pretend he was talking about the mission or the weather or Momo, I knew where this conversation was going. Destination: out of my comfort zone. "Erm..."

He caught my gaze with his and I felt trapped. There was a sober earnestness in his eyes that made it impossible. "Tell me you have no interest in me at all and I will never speak of this again."

I opened my mouth, honestly having no clue what would come out. When he looked at me like that, his eyes filled with such intensity and... something, it made my stomach go tight and fluttery. There were no words at all.

"Hey, Hitsugaya! You going or not? I'm not holding an elevator door in here, ya know?" Urahara's voice from the other room broke the spell and we both flushed and stepped away from each other, as if we had been caught red-handed.

Hitsugaya didn't say anything, still waiting for my reply, waiting for me to tell him I had no interest in him.

"I'll see you when you get back, Captain Hitsugaya."

It took a moment for him to process then answer, his expression slowly warming, a smile curving his lips. "Yes you will." He spun on his heel and disappeared into the other room. "Urahara-san, for the last time, it's _Captain_ Hitsugaya."


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: Since the very first time the Urahara Shoten was shown from the outside, I have been obsessed with the van that is always parked off to the left. It's identical to a Toyota vanagon I drove for years. I loved my potato van. Therefore, Urahara's delivery van gets to be in a fiction. Plus, it ties in to getting Jinta and Ururu in here somewhere, cause I did promise more grown up-ish characters.

~*~

There's something peaceful about having absolutely nothing to do. It's pretty rare too, at least in my world. Even when there seems like there's nothing for Eleventh to do, there's always stuff that has to be done anyway. I have reports. I have Ken-chan's paperwork to look over. Then there are always things that have to be done with the squad. Honestly, you would think that mostly grown men who are such good fighters would be able to take care of things on their own, but there are always things that I have to do for them anyway.

And just why do they think I know about sewing and food and stuff just because I'm the girl? No. You want something mended, you find a tailor. You want food, you cook it yourself or wait until Ken-chan barbecues. Otherwise, you are out of luck.

Having nothing to do at someone else's house is even better and not just because if you're careful you can go through their stuff. The first time Urahara caught me poking, he threatened to put me to work, which actually, was fun. I was 'watching' the shop for him while he tinkered with something in his lab. I was afraid to ask what. I have been exposed to enough of the mad scientist shtick from Captain Clownface.

Nope, I was eating candy and rearranging displays. Dusting. Eating more candy. Hey, it was quality control. I even helped a customer. She seemed surprised by my wonderful service, which says a lot for the usual service. Considering what I had seen already of Jinta and his personality, it was just as well the store was mostly a front, anyway.

I was sampling something that looked like decorative rocks but was actually candy-coated chocolate when my cellphone thingie rang. It wasn't the tracker, but an actual call. "Hiya!"

"How is my most beautiful Vice Captain?" It was Yumi. No one else would ever call me that with a straight tone of voice.

I plunked down on the trap door that led to the 'secret' training ground that I had explored earlier, making sure to pull a bag of chocolates along with me. "Yumi-kun! I'm all right! How are things there?"

"You would not believe," the fifth chair answered. "Captain Kenpachi has been in a meeting all morning. You know the mood he's in and it is not a beautiful thing."

I knew. Meetings annoyed Ken-chan more than they annoyed me. "What kind of meeting?" Maybe if it was a meeting about getting to attack something, that would make it better.

"I don't know. It's with Captain Hitsugaya. The door is closed so I can't hear what they're talking about."

I quit listening after Hitsugaya's name. Oh. That couldn't be good, could it? What did they really have to meet about? Our plan for infiltrating the base of whoever was up to no good with the gigai? That was hardly worth a discussion, much less closing the office door.

"Did you get Ikkaku to listen at the door?" It was a well known fact in the squad that Ikkaku has hearing like a baby bat. Suddenly, I was reminded of something. My eyes narrowed and if they could have, my ears would have laid back like a cat's. "Speaking of Ikakku, put him on the phone."

There was muttering on the other end of the line, then shifting and a curse. "Chiru-kun, I couldn't hear anything. I have no idea what they're..."

I growled low in my throat. "Did you actually call Captain Hitsugaya and tell him _anything_ about me?"

"I can explain!"

"How dare you, when after all this time I have never told anyone that you _wax_ your head?"

Yumi shrieked in the background. "You said it was natural!"

I heard it over the choked sputtering of Ikkaku. "You swore, Yachiru!"

My lips curved upwards in a tight little smile and I popped a piece of chocolate in my mouth. "You also know better than to cross me. What did you tell him?"

"That you'd get him hopelessly lost if he followed your directions. And that he better not even try to get you drunk because you have an insane capacity for alcohol. I might also have mentioned that you cheat at cards."

"I do not cheat. I can't help it if you can't remember what's wild and what isn't!"

"You change the rules mid-game."

"I do not!"

"Damn. Meeting's over and here they come. Gotta go."

He hung up on me. Just like that, and without ever really telling me anything useful. I was trying to decide whether to call him back or throw the phone at the wall when I realized there was someone standing in the doorway behind me, and they might have been there for at least part of the conversation.

"Trouble at home?" Urahara asked with a hopeful grin.

"Nope," I answered, hopping down and tucking my phone away. "Everything's just fine."

"Hm, if you say so. Anyway," he continued, sipping a cup of tea. "My erstwhile helpers are back from their shopping trip. Want to help carry in their loot?" He jerked his head toward the window.

I ducked past him to look out. There was a boxy little van parked in front, that looked like nothing more than a twinkie on wheels. A tall willowy dark haired girl and a red headed boy, both apparently in their late teens were unloading piles of boxes out of the back. The boy was keeping up a constant harangue of insults and jibes at the girl who just took them, either tuning him out or accepting everything he threw at her. Which a couple of times included actual things throw in her direction.

It annoyed me in more ways than I could count.

"Oh, I'll help all right..."

I went outside and waited by the back of the van until he finished dragging out an armload of boxes and hefted them to his shoulder. He was standing precariously with one foot mid-air, like he'd just frozen there, gaping at me.

I clasped my hands behind my back and tried to look innocent and harmless. "Hi, can I help you?"

"Shouldn't I be asking you that? After all, I'm the one that works here." Just that quick, he was at my side, solicitous and with a faintly flirtatious manner, boxes foisted off on the quiet girl behind him. "I'm Jinta Hanakari, at your service."

Aw, crap, just as I figured. This was the infamous Jinta. Lover of all things pervy and schoolgirl related. Not that he wasn't handsome enough in an overdone, brash kind of way. It just wasn't what I found attractive, but it was his personality that threw things over the top. Picking on the weak and those unable or unwilling to defend themselves really annoyed me. Just ask Nemu-kun and Captain Clownface how many times I've picked fights over that.

I batted my eyes and used the all-powerful kitten gaze. "Hanakarai-san, there is something you can help me with."

He leaned in closer, a sort of anticipatory gleam in his eyes. "What is it?"

"Do not," I said, grabbing his crotch and getting a handful of male pride in a deathgrip. "Ever make the mistake that any woman is some tasty little morsel like in those vile magazines and mangas under your mattress."

He yelped, his eyes going wide and dancing on his tiptoes, trying to take the pressure off what I was steadily applying it to.

"And, I contiued sweetly, "You can stop talking to that girl..." I looked at her pointedly, waiting for her name.

She blinked almost impossibly big eyes at me, staring mutely and completely taken aback.

"Her name's Ururu," Urahara whispered helpfully from behind me, sounding like he was enjoying this scene far too much.

I nodded in thanks and continued, "Ururu. You'll treat Ururu-san with some decency and respect or I will be back to finish this job right."

"You know, Jinta, it seems like every other time I see you, it's in a compromising position with a girl I'm interested in. Why is that?"

Eep, that was Captain Hitsugya's voice, at its most dry and ironic. Was he back already? I blushed nine shades of red and quickly released Jinta. "Captain, I can explain."

Hitsugaya was trying hard to hide this smile when I turned to face him. "No need, Kusajishi- kun. I'm well acquainted with his antics." He offered me his hand. "If you're done here, we have work to do."

~*~

A/N: Sorry this has taken me a few days longer than I wanted. Blame allergies and too much RL. I promise the next chapter tomorrow and yes, I do answer the Jinta and Toshiro love triangle question. Plus we get back to the action.


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: The parts seem to be steadily getting longer. Oops. I'm getting my groove back, I think. Or Toshiro is taking over and refusing to let things distract him. Heh. I think that's more likely it.

I let Hitsugaya take my hand and pull me away from the yard of the shop, back inside. My mind skittered across all the questions I wanted to ask, all the explanations I wanted to give and somehow focused on the feel of his hand. It was warm. I suppose with the aura of cold that he projected so often, I expected him to have cold hands.

"There goes my theory that there would be fewer interruptions and distractions in the living world," Hitsugaya muttered under his breath.

"Wait..." I processed everything he had said to Jinta, dropping his hand. "What other girls? Interested in? Who are these girls?"

He closed the door to Urahara's living quarters behind us and almost laughed under his breath. "How in the... I've watched you fight other vice captains and anticipate their every move. I've seen you nearly feed Renji his own arm. If there is anything you are not, it is slow."

I scowled at him and repeated myself, slower and with more emphasis. "What girls?"

The captain sighed and gestured to the cushions by the table. "Since we have time, let's talk."

Seated on the cushion and hands folded on the table, I watched him expectantly, ready to listen and talk back as needed. "Okay then. Talk."

Hitsugaya settled, running a hand through his hair and then picking at a zipper on the pocket of his gigai's pants. "At one time, Jinta and I both liked the same girl."

Nodding, I gestured for him to move along. I had gotten that part. "So what happened? Who was the girl and do you still like her? Is he still involved with her?" Her future might depend on a couple of those answers. I might not know what I was going to do about this whatever it might be between us, but I knew what would happen to any girl who spurned my Snowball for an ass like Jinta.

He shook his head and focused his gaze on me until I was squirming under the weight of it. "No and no. It was Kurosaki's little sister, Karin." I opened my mouth to say something and he raised a hand, a pained expression crossing his face. "It's kind of a long story but no, there was never really anything between us. I didn't say anything to her, she didn't say anything to me and the whole thing was largely a disaster. We were both stupid about it, I guess."

I frowned at the table top. "Sounds like it was painful, anyway."

With a shrug, he continued. "Jinta had no trouble saying that he liked her, however. They went out until they very nearly beat each other to a bloody pulp. Now, Jinta dates the other sister."

After mulling that over I shook my head in puzzlement. "So... you still never said anything about it to her."

Hitsugaya gave me an almost exasperated glance. "No, because I'm very much interested in someone else now, and I swear if you say Momo's name I will beat my head on this table."

I seized on the name. "We're talking about Momo now?"

He groaned and did thunk his forehead against the table. "Momo's... broken. Aizen destroyed something inside her, but he's all that exists for her. Even if there were some proof that he was completely defeated and dead, she wouldn't ever believe it. She saw him killed once before, remember? And he was still alive." He looked horribly sad and as if he'd lost something irreplaceable. "Whatever might have once been possible between us, it'll never be now. He made it impossible. I love her, but not in the way that you're thinking."

Ouch. I was sorry I asked, in a way. I'd wanted to know, but that the telling had hurt him even that much made me wish I hadn't.

"And now that I've had to explain that twice in one day, do you think we could get back to the important part of this discussion?"

Twice? Who else could have been asking about that? Unless... I was suspicious, maybe even paranoid, but imagining him explaining that to Ken-chan gave me the heebie-jeebies. "What's more important than your sordid past with a bunch of girls?"

Heh, I'd gotten him to look annoyed again. It made me feel perversely better. "There is no bunch of girls. Especially not if you're trying to include Momo in their number."

"And are we getting back to work?" I was putting him off again, and intentionally annoying him. It couldn't work forever but I was more than willing to use it for now to keep him at bay.

"Yes, but at this rate, you will get this problem solved and then what are you going to do?" Hm, sounds as if he was as aware of my plan as I was of his intentions.

"Oh," I replied breezily as I got to my feet. "You know how things are back at the Seireitei. Never a moment's peace."

"Less peace than even you can imagine," He muttered, getting to his feet as well.

"So are we going to check out that shop?" I bounced on my toes, more than willing to leave at that very moment. I was looking forward to finding out what was going on, maybe getting in a good scuffle. Ken-chan had told me about the time he'd ripped the mask right off an arrancar with his bare hands. I really wanted to try that, even if arrancar were getting rarer all the time.

"We might as well, since you aren't going to pay attention to anything else right now."

On our way out, we saw Uruahara with a clipboard, supervising the unloading of the van, Jinta and Ururu diligently scrambling around and organizing all the packages to their boss' satisfaction.

"Where's Ukitake's manga?" Urahara glanced up from him clipboard and waved at us as we departed.

"Here!" Ururu held up a paper wrapped package.

"Monthly fix of catboy yaoi safely procured," snorted Jinta, pointedly ignoring us.

I started walking faster. I did not want to know. There are just some thing about your fellow captains and vice captains you don't want to know, trust me.

Ah, it felt good to once again be on track and back to working on our assignment. I was hitting my stride, walking loose-limbed and happily through the streets, already planning what would go down when we reached the piercing place. Everything was going fine and...

"Kusajishi-kun, where are you going?" Hitsugaya was stopped on the sidewalk behind me with his hands on his hips.

"Um, why?"

"You're going the wrong way."

I frowned and looked around, taking note of the landmarks and the street names. "Are you sure?"

He sighed that long-suffering sigh he was getting so much use out of and took me by the arm, leading me in the exact opposite direction I had been headed in. "I suppose he was right about the cards and alcohol too then."

"Ikkaku is a pathological liar! Just so you know!" He was still going to get it when I got home too. If Baldy thought he was getting off with just me letting slip that he waxes his head, he had another thing coming. "Besides, do you even drink or play cards to begin with? I can't imagine you doing either."

Hitsugaya settled my arm through the crook of his comfortably and kept walking, now that we were back on course. "I have been known to do both. I'm not as sober and uptight as you seem to think I am, at least not all the time. I am a captain though and in public, I have to maintain my image, especially because of who I am and my age."

"Pft!" I scoffed. "Image." I did understand about keeping up images, I just didn't understand why they had to be taken so seriously all the time. It seemed to suck so much joy out of life.

"You don't understand," he replied softly. "With everything that I have gone through to reach this point?" His brows etched into a tight frown and a chill crept along my arm that was linked through his. "I owe it to a lot of people to take the responsibilities and privileges I've been given seriously. I can't let them down and I can't break the promises I've made to myself."

Maybe I didn't understand all of that, but there was something I did. "D'ya really think though, that any of them would want you to be sober and serious all the time too?"

That earned me another of Hitsugaya's wry looks. "You sounded like Rangiku just then."

"She's a smart woman. You should probably listen to her more often." I beamed at him brightly. "Besides that, she's one of my role models."

I thought I got a glimpse of that smile again. The soft, almost rueful one that some part of me wanted to claim for my very own. "You're terrifying, Kusajishi-kun."

"Thank you, Captain Hitsugaya."

There was an awkward silence between us for a moment. I could tell there was something he wanted to say, but he was debating it, arguing it over in his head first. The polite thing to do was wait and see if he would say it or not. I waited. I couldn't tell which side was winning though.

"Kusajishi-kun," He began slowly. I waited, my breath caught in my throat. "You don't _have_ to always refer to me by my title."

I looked upward to make sure the sky wasn't falling, or the world had suddenly come to an end and I hadn't noticed. "What?"

"Obviously, I don't always refer to you as Vice Captain Kusajishi, anymore. I thought that might act a sign... unless that makes you uncomfortable and you would rather..."

"No," I answered quickly, stunned and rather embarrassed since I stopped to think about it. "I... could stop, I suppose." What was I supposed to call him instead? Was I supposed to know? Was it obvious? -San would be appropriate? There were captains I referred to with that honorific.

I suddenly felt miserable. I hated worrying about things like that. I dreaded proper etiquette and such because I felt horribly out of my depth and it brought sharp light onto my upbringing. I would not feel inadequate about it. My breath caught in my throat and I chewed on my lip in stress, because somehow, I did care about offending him.

Hitsugaya stopped and gently turned me to face him, his expression growing alarmed and worried. "I'm sorry. It's not a big deal. You can call me whatever you want. I don't want to make you uncomfortable. If you don't want to call me Hitsugaya-kun, it'll be fine."

I looked up at him from where my gaze had been fastened on the buttons on his shirt. "Hitsugaya-kun?" I wasn't sure that I had ever heard anyone call him that, at least not to his face.

"But just in social settings, mind you." He smiled to make sure I knew he was teasing. "No calling me that in front of Yamamoto or in the middle of a meeting or anything. Then, I'd just have to correct you like everyone else."

Then we were walking again, my hand still tucked through his elbow and him leading the way. I was content for the moment to just follow silently, because I had an awful lot to think over and process. I felt like the whole world had turned over on its side by just a few degrees. A constant or two had just stopped being constant, at least from my perspective.


	8. Chapter 8

A/N: This took a lot longer than I would have liked to get out. I blame my Espada muses who think EVERYTHING should be about them, even when it is not AT ALL about them. Hence getting lost on deviant art for three hours looking at Szayzel pictures when I should have been writing. . Oh yes, and there are mild spoilers for the pendulum arc in here. Be ye warned.

~*~

I stood in front of the shop with a bemused look on my face, reading the smaller hand lettered sign under the huge body piercings banner. "Pointy Things and Stuff?"

Hitsugaya stood beside me, his arms crossed over his chest. I could see his misgivings written all over his expression. "And you really think this is a good plan? To just walk in here and let them poke you with a more than likely dirty needle?"

I scoffed and pushed the door open, listening to the dull chime of the bells tied on the inside handle. "Grew up in dirt. Ate dirt before Ken-chan took me in. Probably managed to eat dirt even after that, too."

The inside of the shop was darker than it had been outside, the windows across the front were covered with bamboo blinds, mostly rolled down. There were a multitude of cases, filled with various bits and baubles, an incense burner shaped like a dragon and piles of mangas laying about. What I didn't see was anyone else.

We looked at each other and I shrugged. I went over to one of the cases, inspecting all the very foreign hoops and studs and spiky looking things. I imagined they would be very intimidating to someone who had never been chased by Yumi, bent on cutting their hair with Fuji Kujaku. For the record, that didn't end well.

Hitsugaya and I looked at each other as we heard movement and whispered voices behind the beaded curtain. I got a big 'I told you so' look. Okay, maybe coming in with reiatsu guns ablazing as it were wasn't the most prudent move, but Ken-chan has always said if you're trying to hide your spiritual pressure, you are up to no good. I try to always keep that in mind.

The beaded curtain parted and a reedy blond guy with a page-boy haircut looked us both over with a little more suspicion than the average shopkeeper would use. I wasn't all together sure whether his baring of teeth was a smile of welcome, some sort of feral hiss or is his lips were just a tad too small for the set of teeth they were guarding.

He pegged my 'up to something' meter. He wasn't human, I'd bet my zanpakuto on it, but he wasn't putting off a whiff of reiatsu. Possibly a good thing. That meant he wasn't wearing one of the gigai we were looking for. They put it off all on their own.

"So," the stranger drawled after inspecting us right back. "Can I help you with anything or are you just wasting my time?"

Hitsugaya stepped nearly completely in front of me and answered before I could again. It was getting to be a very bad habit with him. I honestly could answer for myself without starting a confrontation... most of the time. "My friend here would like a piercing, if you aren't too busy."

The blond looked at me again and then cast a glance over his shoulder back, through the curtain. "We are busy," He answered. "We're having a bug problem."

Hitsugaya's voice took on a firm but polite tone. "We don't mind, bugs, do we Kusajishi-kun? But we are from out of town, and I don't know when we'll be back this way again." He gave the guy a very pointed look. "We will be telling our friends about this place. I'd like to say good things."

There was glaring and staring between the two and a certain amount of escalating reiatsu from both parties. Impressive and probably a bit scary on the objective scale. Then the blond held the curtain aside for us. "Sure, sure. Come on in the back and we'll see what we can do. By the way, I'm Shinji Hirako."

The room beyond the curtain was spacious and had the communal look to it, part living room, part workspace and part kitchen. There was a dark-haired girl with glasses sitting on the floor reading and another guy, this one with silver hair and a no shirt lifting barbells in the far corner. He had the same 69 tattoo as Captain Hisagi. Did Hisagi have a brother? I'd have to remember to ask Hissa-onii about it later.

Hirako waved a hand hair airily in the general direction of the table. "Please, sit, make yourselves comfortable. Lisa, why don't you get them some refreshments?"

Hitsugaya looked decidedly uncomfortable with the whole thing, uncomfortable enough that it was starting to get chilly even as far from him as a foot or so. On the other hand, I was willing to go along with things for the moment. So far, Hirako and his cohorts hadn't done anything more sinister than be a tad on the unwelcoming side. I sat.

Lisa looked us both over with an air of boredom and got to her feet. "Hope canned soda and leftover donuts are all right with you."

"Sure, we don't mean to be any trouble at all." I gave them all what I hope was an innocent and friendly smile. I hoped it made up for the fact that Captain Hedgehog was glaring daggers at all of them and really looked like he'd like to draw his sword on the lot of them. Why did I always feel like there were things going on all around me that I was missing when I was with him? Or was it that I didn't even notice they were going on the rest of the time?

Hirako sat down across from me, absently taking a can of soda that Lisa passed him and opening it. "So just what kind of piercing do you want? Ear? Nose?" He looked at Hitsugaya. "You would look tight with an eyebrow ring."

Hitsugaya glared at him while opening his can and taking a drink. "I think not."

I tilted my head considering Hitsugaya's eyebrow and imagining a ring there, trying to match the way he'd opened the can without looking like I'd never done it before. I got it open and triumphantly took a drink. "Ooh, I think it would look good." I took another drink and quickly looked away when he turned the glare to me. "Anyway," I went on. "I want my belly button pierced."

Coming very close to leering at me and showing a flash of tongue ring as he answered, Hirako purred. "That would be my pleasure."

I frowned, getting ready to tell him off for the look when Hitsugaya's hand closed around my wrist, pulling the can of soda further away from my mouth. "Kusajishi-kun, how much of this did you drink?"

I looked at the captain in surprise. Not only was it an odd question, but his voice was slurred, his hand all clammy on my skin and his eyes weren't quite tracking correctly. I jiggled the can a little to judge. Yup, it was I suspected. "Most of it."

"Dammit, we've been drugged!"

I had to think about it for a moment and downed the rest of the soda while I considered it. Maybe there was a bitter aftertaste. I hadn't ever had grapefruit soda so it was hard to say. I looked at Hirako and then Lisa. "Drugged?"

Hissa-onii guy from the corner caught Hitsugaya as he slid off his cushion in a drug-induced daze. "How much did you give them, Lise?"

The dark girl pushed up her glasses and shrugged. "Enough to put out a captain."

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Hissa-onii let Hitsugaya slide down to rest against my leg and snickered. "_Your_ former captain? You've probably killed them both!"

Lisa put her hands on her hips. "He built a tolerance, okay? You have no idea how much Shunsui drank."

"Drinks," I corrected, putting things together in my head. "Still drinks like a fish." I stroked Hitsugaya's head where it was currently nuzzling its way into my lap, accompanied by the most undignified giggle I had ever heard, from him or anyone else.

All three of the Visards, because of course that's who they had to be, were staring at me.

"Hey, guys?" Hirako asked. "Why isn't it affecting her? And if I got the wrong can, why isn't it getting me?"

"Maybe she's Twelfth? I hear they are all freaks now."

Lisa smacked Hissa-onii on the back of the head. "Who's calling someone a freak, Kensei?"

I'd let them go on long enough. "Eleventh, but it would be Captain Kurotsuchi of Twelfth's fault that_ I_ have a tolerance. He used to drug me to get me out of his hair when I was younger."

Kensei glared at Hirako. "Now what, Mr. 'I Have a Plan'? We can't just drug them and then run if one of them _isn't drugged_!"

Hirako gritted his teeth and rubbed his forehead. "What a pain. Will everyone shut up for a moment?"

Everyone shut up, except Hitsugaya who was now laying in my lap staring up at me with a bedazzled expression. "Yachiru, you are so pretty. Like a beautiful pink rose, all beautiful and dangerously thorny at the same time. I think I love you."

I could feel my face getting hot as I blushed brilliantly, possibly the worse blush I had ever had in my life. It was a far worse blush than the time Ken-chan had spanked me in front of half the squad for gluing rhinestones all over his captain's robe ten minutes before a formal ceremony.

Hirako's amusement was all too evident in his smirk. "I guess he isn't usually that eloquent in his declarations of love?"

I ducked my head, trying to hide behind my hair for the first time I could ever remember. "I wouldn't know. It's the first time I've ever heard one of them."

~*~

A/N: Yes, I know, leaving it right there is evil, but I promise, next chapter will be out sooner than the last was. *G* And you did read that right. I gave Hisagi a promotion. And Kensei got a nickname.


	9. Chapter 9

A/N: So much for getting this out as quickly as I promised. RL sucks. In my defense, I had to stop and get some other thoughts on paper before they got away.

And yeah, I figure at some point it is possible that the visards and our protagonists might have crossed paths, but my reckoning is that they probably wouldn't remember them exactly and recognize them at a later date. After all, there would be a lot of shinigami around, things going on, wars being waged... kids grow up, change... there you have it. Plus, the visards aren't exactly in the hot gossip and news loop. Heh, it's dramatic license okay?

~*~

Wow, a declaration of love. What was I supposed to do about that? Probably nothing. After all, Hitsugaya was drugged, which was like being drunk. Ken-chan and the others had long since taught me that the polite thing was to ignore things that happened when people were drunk unless they brought them up sober. So there you go, once again, I had a firm plan in mind.

What to do about the visards trafficking with the arrancar was going to be a lot harder to solve. I mean really, we couldn't just throw down and the winner got to call the shots, right? That wasn't why Hitsugaya had brought me on this mission was it? Of course not, there was no way he was that lazy. Rangiku, sure, she would have thought of that, but not Hitsugaya.

"Not that I blame him," Hiraku mused, referring to Hitsugaya's declaration of love. "You are one hell of a catch." He paused. "Eleventh... and what seat? Fourth at the very least?"

"Vice Captain."

"That makes you the Kenpachi's Vice... I thought that kid he was raising was..." His eyebrows shot up under his bangs. "Heh... oh."

Hissa-onii, Lisa had called him Kensei, hooked a thumb at Hitsugaya. "That makes him?"

I petted Snowball's hair and smiled down at him fondly. "Tenth Captain, Toshiro Hitsugaya."

Said captain grinned back up at me goofily and played with a piece of my hair.

Hiraku pinched the bridge of his nose and sounded like he had a serious headache. "Crap, we're getting old. They're sending children out after us, now." He clapped his hands together. "All right, we need to get this taken care of before..." The front door of the shop banged open and a series of bickering voices could be heard. Hiraku looked like someone had slammed his head in said door. "...the others get back."

"OY, SHINJI!" A piercing girl's voice yelled. "COME GET THIS!"

"Shit," Kensei said, looking at Lisa.

"Shit," she agreed, turning to Hiraku.

"Yep, shit." Hiraku nodded, going to the curtain and ducking through. "They're back and we're all fucked."

There was a moment or two of Hiraku talking softly, then a thwaking noise of some sort followed by a yelp. I looked at the two visards. Concerned, but unsurprised summed up their reactions. I edged Hitsugaya out of my lap and watched the curtain. Later, we would all agree, that was the moment that hell broke loose.

A girl with blond pigtails, roughly my height came barreling through the curtain, her zanpakuto drawn and fury in her eyes. "Who the hell are you dickheads and want do you want?"

I was on my feet in a moment, but cursing the fact that I was in a gigai and it would take valuable time to shed it and get my hands on my own zanpakuto. "I'm..."

Thwack. I knew what had made that sound before. Apparently she had her slipper in her other hand and was pretty damn handy with it. "I don't care who you are! Get out now and I won't kill you both."

"Hiyori!" Hiraku was waving his arms at her in all manners of 'cut it out' gestures.

I was busy trying to process the fact that someone had just slapped me in the face with their footwear and then threatened my life. I could feel anger and heat percolating up through me slowly. I've always imagined it started somewhere low in my belly, around my center of gravity, but it spread, fully filling me when I could feel my cheeks getting warm. When they did, I'd been told my reiatsu curled around me in a pink haze, and the uncharitable said I got a lunatic smile uncannily like Ken-chan's.

I was smiling as I popped a soul candy in my mouth and got the gigai out of my way. "Oh, let's play, then." My katana slid smoothly from the scabbard that still sported the training wheels Ikkaku had made for it. I stepped over my gigai and advanced on Hiyori, murder very much on my mind. To Hueco Mundo with whatever plan Hitsugaya had in mind. He'd brought Eleventh to the table when he'd picked me for this mission and that's what he was going to get.

Hiraku had his arms wrapped around Hiyori, literally holding her off the ground and restraining her. "Wait! Not here! Absolutely not! HATCHI!"

I got nailed from behind by bakudo sixty three and hoisted over Kensei's shoulder. "Hey, Hatch, this is going to hold her right?"

"It should."

A new voice I didn't recognize from the back snorted. "Right, I did hear that before."

I got very tired of being talked over, especially when I was bound and being carried off. So I did the most natural thing for the situation. I hauled off and bit the first thing that came in range.

"Holy shit, she just bit my ass!" Kensei howled.

Lisa was following us down a long flight of stairs apparently. "Kinky."

"Seriously, Lise, is my ass bleeding?"

"Breathe through it and relax. It only hurts for a moment."

Hiraku was somewhere in front of us because I could hear him laughing uncontrollably.

"Oh shaddup, both of you." Kensei grumbled and bounced me on his shoulder until I lost my breath. "And you do that again and I'll quit being nice."

I picked a different spot to bite the second time then blew my hair out of my eyes and squirmed to get a good look at where we were going. "Hey, does every exiled shinagami have one of these things?" We were descending into a basement that looked a whole lot like the one under Urahara Shoten.

"And now she knows that we're trespassing in Urahara's basement too! Great job, Shinji! Tell me again why the hell I haven't killed your stupid ass too?" That was the pigtailed freak.

"Because she didn't know that at all until you told her, idiot!" Hiraku growled. "Hatchi, get us a six layered barrier. If these two go all cat fight on us, we're going to need it."

"Six?" Hatchi sounded worried and I wondered just what it was that he was getting asked to do. "All right but give me a minute!"

When we reached the bottom of the seemingly endless stairs, I was unceremoniously dumped on the ground, flat on my ass, my arms still bound. I glared up at Kensei and he glared back.

"That's for biting me... twice." Kensei rubbed his ass and back to stand near the two guys holding Hitsugaya by the arms. They were more holding him steady on his feet than restraining him, though he looked like he would have been happy to get away from them too.

"You all right?" Hitsugaya asked keeping his voice low. He sounded like the drugs, whatever they were, has started to wear off in a hurry.

"Everything's peachy, Captain. Grab a seat and relax." I smiled, and yes, the smile felt a little demented and feral even to me. I might have been kido bound and laying in the dirt in someone's basement, but in a few minutes, I'd get to fight and then, everything would be right in the world again.

The restraints came off at the same time I hear the utterly ginormous Hatchi tell the others, "It's up and she's..."

Bam, I had my sword out and was already mid-flash step toward my opponent. Hiraku swore under his breath and tossed Hiyori straight up in the air and got out of our way.

"...loose."

Then, it was fight time. I was more than ready to let the slipper slapping bitch have it and I did. I went to the happy zen place in my head, where there was all the time in the world to see every step, every sword stroke and plan accordingly. I could hear my zanpakuto waking up slowly and beginning to hum to himself in the back of my mind.

I didn't have to _think_ about my sword or what I was doing. It was natural. Like walking, like breathing. Captain Clownface had once told me that a person's body did hundreds of things every second that you take completely for granted, like focusing your eyes and breathing, all without ever sparing a thought. Fighting can be like that if you train hard enough and do it long enough, or so I firmly believe.

"What are you smiling about, you idiot? Knock it off, we're fighting here!" Hiyori yelled at me, trying to slam her zanpakuto guard and fist through my face.

"Why else would I be smiling? If you don't want to fight, why are you?"

Hiyori was still looking at me like I was some particularly stupid bug. "Because if I don't, you and the rest of Soul Society will try to kill us?"

"Well you are selling gigai to arrancar."

Hiraku answered from where he was sitting on a rock, apparently texting someone. "We have a lot in common with them."

"Yeah," Kensei answered. "We all got fucked by Aizen."

Lisa laughed. "Speak for yourself. I never touched the man."

I could practically hear Kensei gritting his teeth. "We were... he... DAMMIT! You make everything sound perverted! You know what I mean!"

I was still keeping up with Hiyori's every blow, smiling all the while. If she wasn't so annoying, I thought I could spar with her more often. She was _good_.

"What I think Kensei means to say," Hiraku interjected, standing back up and dusting off the seat of his pants. "Is that you're dealing with shades of gray. Shinigami mixed with a bit of hollow, hollow mixed with a bit of shinigami. Are the end results really that different? Visard, arrancar... however you want to say it, we got handed a bad deal. None of us asked for this."

"Oh yeah, I meant to monologue on like that. Really, I did." Kensei snorted.

"But the arrancar, they destroy people. How can you let them have gigai so they can go out and eat humans?"

"Actually," Lisa answered, adjusting her glasses and marking her place in her manga with her finger. "They don't. They eat other hollows. They need more reiatsu than most humans would ever supply."

I frowned at Hitsugaya the next chance I had. "Central 46 would really kill the visards just for what they've done."

Hitsugaya thought about it. "Yes. No." He scratched his head and then sighed. "Probably. And in any case, I think they're wanted dead anyway."

Well crap, that sucked.

"Hey, we're fighting here! Could you at least pay attention or do I have to give you something to pay attention to?" Hiyori growled, getting in a very nice slice on my arm as I blocked.

"Oh, sorry," I said, ignoring the wound. "Go on then. If you want."

She snarled, which looked somewhat menacing with her fang thing going on, then she made a dragging gesture across her face and pulled her mask on.

"Ooh," I breathed in the dramatic pause, sort of entranced by the horn on her mask. "Pretty! Is it a unicorn?"

The silence continued. Only now it had a feeling that I was much more accustomed to. It was the 'Yachiru really didn't just say that' sound. Unicorns were good, right? It's not like her mask looked like a warthog or a bear or something. That would be just awful.


	10. Chapter 10

A/N: I'm having far too much fun with this, really. I just want to take a moment to say thanks to you guys for reading and reviewing. You guys are teh_shit!

~*~

Inarticulate rage is a phrase you hear a lot, but it really does fit Hiyori's reaction. When she came at me again, she was stronger, faster and her spiritual pressure had at least doubled. Hell yes, it was time to get down to business, because if she could let loose and take this seriously, so could I.

Hiraku took a step back and crossed his arms, asking Hitsugaya. "Does she have bankai? Or at least a really impressive shikai?"

"I've never heard anything about her having bankai. She probably has shikai though... probably." Hitsugaya answered, shrugging off the two visards holding his arms and straightening his clothes. I was amused. The drugs seemed to have loosened Captain Snowball's tongue.

"Probably? It's a requirement for Vice Captains!"

"Eleventh." I called over my shoulder. I was a little busy fending off the crazed unicorn to elaborate.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Lisa asked.

"Eleventh pretty much does what they want and they can usually get away with it." Hitsugaya answered. "Kenpachi doesn't _have_ bankai and their third seat _has_ it but won't tell anyone about it."

"Then how..." Kensei started.

"Because we all know about it anyway! You can't just hide something like Ryumon Hozukimaru!"

"Leave it to Ikkaku to get his shirt off for bankai," I complained, getting more than annoyed with Hiyori crowding me with a flurry of close range attacks.

"Shut the fuck up and fight, dick cheese!"

"You called me...what?" I gathered my reiatsu and let loose with a blast of Hado four straight at her head. It more or less landed and got her out of my face.

It also apparently chipped the horn on her mask, because that's what she was screaming about as she flew at me again.

"Whoops, Hatchi, big hole over there... try a few more layers." Hiraku said, trying to stay out of either of our lines of fire now.

Hitsugaya looked awed and impressed. "She had to have learned that from Byakuya. No one uses that as well as he does... in fact, he's practically the only one that uses it at all, anymore."

My witty quips for that would have to wait. I was paying a little more attention to the fight at hand than snappy banter. Not that snappy banter isn't a part of every good battle, because it is. Hiyori was proving to be a very good fight except for that one little flaw. She didn't have that love for the verbal sparring that should go along with. What was the utter defeat and loss of blood if you also couldn't make them red with shame? Honestly, dickcheese? Sad.

The next time she came in close, I was ready and gave as good as she did. Fists and swords, a couple of vicious elbows and a few minor hado. We were tearing it up. Our audience outside the barrier continued to talk but I missed most of it. There was a different kind of intensity to the fight now.

When we got back around to using our zanpakuto, we were both more bloody and battered for the wear. I had blood in my eyes and one of them was swollen almost completely shut. That was not something I would choose to put up with like Ken-chan. Call me lazy or weak, but I like seeing, thanks.

Maybe it was the impaired vision, maybe it was the fact that my ribs felt broken in from Hiyori kicking the crap out of them, but she landed a blow meant to knock my sword out of my hand. Instead, it pissed me off enough that I was done with the fight. I was done with stupid visards and their stupid gigai and I was done with shades of gray. I wanted black and white. I wanted a liberal dose of red with that.

I went for her head. Not a sissy stab to the heart or a messy rip through the midsection, I wanted a nice clean slice right above the shoulders, leveling them off. She dodged. Instead of that solid SCHNICK sound, I got a puny FWIP and a tiny flutter of blond hairs.

There was one of those utterly perfect pauses as everything stopped and she reached up, feeling where there had been a little blond pigtail before and now there was only a tiny decapitated nub. "YOU BITCH!"

I felt her reiatsu building, and I even guessed what she was about to do. I'd seen cero before and I'd seen what it was capable of. I scrambled through the possible counters for it in my head and discarded most of them as too much trouble or possibly not effective enough. I settled on drawing up my own reiatsu not worrying about how much. I'd let my limiter cut me off when I got there.

I could hear a lot of cursing and movement from outside the barrier but at that moment, the whole world narrowed down to just me and unicorn girl. When she fired, I'd nail her with everything I had in one of my very favorite attacks.

Then, she fired. I widened my stance, braced my feet and held my hand, palm extended out in front of me. "Hado one, Sho." I put the force of every bit of reiatsu I could claim into that one blast because I wasn't sure just how much it would take to repel her cero.

Truthfully, I wasn't sure it would be enough. I hated fighting with the limiter on at all. I was used to knowing my exact real limits, but I could hear the voice of my kido instructor in my head, telling me when all was said and done, go with the simplest kido with the most force behind it that would accomplish your goals. Most people underestimate the versatility and sheer power you can pack behind Thrust.

It drove the cero back, square into Hiyori's stomach and then pushed her back through the barrier, shattering the whole dome. She didn't stop until she fetched up hard against the rock outcropping behind her, pinning her there in a cartoonish _splat_ position for a moment before she slid down into a pile on the ground.

I dropped to my knees, spent and feeling weak and watery for a moment until I caught my breath and steadied myself. I was putting myself back together again before she could get up again. I hoped she didn't get up. I was done with this fight. It had reached the conclusion as far as I was concerned.

"Pinkness... blind..." Hiyori groaned, barely stirring. She stayed down. Good.

I turned to face the other visards and Hitsugaya. They were behind the nearest small outcropping, bent for protection and peering over it at me. I flicked the blood off the blade of my zanpakuto. Most of it was probably mine. I had a leak somewhere on my sword arm. Would they accept Hiyori's defeat? Would I have to face them one after another? There were more than a captain or two among the rest.

That could be a problem with my limit in place. They weren't going to fall for the same thrust trick twice. If I had to call back to the Seireitei to get permission to have the limit removed, Ken-chan might just disown me.

"I think we should talk this over," Hiraku suggested reasonably. "We should be able to come to some sort of agreement."

I turned to Captain Hitsugaya, who Lisa was holding down behind the rocks. He shrugged.

I shrugged. "All right. Let's talk."


	11. Chapter 11

We were once again sitting around the table in the piercing shop. Hatchi was using kido to heal the worst of Hiyori's wounds. I'd passed on the healing, settling instead for some good old fashioned soap and water and some less old fashioned wound sealing goop from Captain Clownface. The rest of the visards were ranged around on the other side of the table from me and Hitsugaya.

The captain was still a little on the flaky side. Since the battle was over, he'd wavered back and forth between seeming all right to downright goofy again. He'd managed not to say anything incredibly embarrassing or crawl in my lap, but I was still nominally leading this whole thing.

Did Vice Captains get a class in diplomacy and negotiation? Had I attended or just grabbed snacks and left? In any case, I was trying to bluff my way through this and hoped the visards didn't notice that I was making this up as I went along.

"You can't pass out gigai to arrancar." I said, tilting my arm back to glue shut a long gash in the back of my forearm.

"Even ones that were never aligned with Aizen to being with?" Hiraku was rolling a bottle of beer between his hands and looking like that would make a difference to me.

"Arrancar. Bad. No." Sometimes, you had to use little words.

"But..."

I moved my hand to rest on the zanpakuto resting across my lap. "No. We can do this one of two ways. You can agree, and we can take that information back to the seireitei and deal with it from there, or I can call and tell them you won't agree and we can rain on your parade big time. Ken-chan is itching for a big fight."

The visards shared a look among themselves and there was an undercurrent of them coming to some sort of agreement among themselves.

"What's to keep central 46 from sending you right back to wipe us out anyway?"

Damn good question, because I couldn't see any reason why they wouldn't. Arrancar made everyone pretty jumpy where there were arrancar, eventually there were Espada and everyone knew what happened when _they_ showed up.

I turned to confer with Hitsugaya, who was inspecting a donut with a _look_ on his face. "Why do these things have holes in the middle like a hollow?" He looked at Hiraku, demanding an answer.

The blond visard rubbed the back of his neck, creeped out by the fact that the actual captain here was not paying attention to the matters at hand. "I don't know."

"My donut is a hollow... RAWR!" He made menacing gestures with it toward Kensei who was sitting on his other side.

I reached over, grabbed the possible evil baked good and took a bite out of it. I hoped that would put us back on track. "Honestly, Hiraku-san, what other choices do you have?

"Hey, kids, " Urahara said strolling in as if he owned the place. "You were late for dinner. I was getting worried and Tessai was fussy because his spare ribs aren't nearly as good reheated." He eyed the visards. "I should have known if there was trouble to check on you lot first."

Hiyori growled from her end of the room, shrugging off Hatchi's hands and jumping to her feet. "It's your fault. It's always your fault that there is trouble to start with, you dumbass!"

Urahara's eyes widened in surprise as he noticed Hiyori's generally beaten down appearance and the hair she still hadn't had a chance to do anything with. Then he turned to look at me where I was dabbing glue stuff on my busted knuckles. "Have you girls been scuffling?"

I put all my first aid supplies back in my purse and shrugged. "She started it, but I finished it."

"Hiyori, I'm ashamed, my vice captain getting rubbed in what looks like considerable dirt by anything less than a full unit?"

That brought Hiyori to a complete stop. "I... wait, I'm _not_ your vice captain anymore! I never wanted to be! You can't order me around!"

"I can tell you to get out of my basement!"

"Make me!"

Ken-chan would have whapped me with the flat of his sword for talking like that. I nudged Hiraku with my toe. "Hey, so what about that piercing?"

"Huh?" The blond replied, dragging his eyes away from Urahara and Hiyori who looked like they were just getting warmed up.

I fought the urge to roll my eyes. "I did come here for a piercing."

"I thought you came here to kick our asses for the gigai and bring about justice for the Soul Society."

I made a face. When he put it that way, it sounded so very drab and serious. Not at all the way I would have described it. "The ass kicking was just for fun. We decided you're going to stop selling the gigai to avoid the justice and I want my piercing now."

He smiled again, without the forced aggressiveness from before. "All right." He got to his feet and offered me a hand up. "C'mon, those two will be at it for a while. They can do this for hours."

My attention strayed to Hitsugaya, who was methodically destroying the remaining donuts before eating the pieces.

"Lise and Kensei will keep an eye on him. Promise."

I took his hand and let him pull me to my feet. Right, I was accepting the word of a visard. I'm the first to admit that my judgment of people seems completely random and arbitrary at times. Just ask anyone in eleventh though, how often I've been wrong. There are only two people that have ever offered me edibles that I have refused. Captain Ichimaru and Captain Aizen. Coincidence? I think not.

We went back through the front of the shop and into a tiny room off one side. I sat where Hiraku pointed. On the vaguely sinister looking medical table. I laid back, watching him carefully gather his supplies and instruments.

"So why are you doing this?" He asked.

Why was I? It had been a whim and a cover story for entering the shop. When that need had vanished, it should have been forgotten. Was I just a plain rebellious adolescent after all? Was this going to be my physical manifestation of my desire to do something that no one would approve of? I hoped not. I hoped it was more along the lines of something individually mine. Probably more of the other but dammit, pretty! Mine.

"What do you think when you see one on a girl?"

He smiled, gesturing for me to raise my shirt. "I think I see a girl who's sexy and I know she's not afraid of a little pain to get what she wants."

I couldn't help but laugh. I was pretty much the walking poster girl for not afraid of pain.

"You won't lose this, you know." He pulled on his gloves with a decisive snap and picked up a marking pen, uncapping it with his teeth. "You lose the gigai and go home, this little ring will go with. You sure you want that?"

"You can do that?"

He winked at me again and meticulously put a dot on the skin just above my belly button. "_I_ can."

Silence fell while he poked around my belly button, making sure the placement was just so and then putting a clamp over the spot. "So," he asked casually. "You and the tenth captain. What is that?"

I blushed again, but not with nosebleed intensity. "Not sure yet."

"'Cause you know, if you have a thing for captains, I was a captain." He paused, picking up the curved needle and regarding it for a moment. "I had a thing for other people's Vice Captains, too."

The visard with a needle, about to poke me was hitting on me. Was that weird? I thought it was weird. Maybe I wasn't as immune to whatever drugs they had slipped me as I had thought.

"Deep breath now, and let it out slowly."

I did as told, though why, I have no idea. getting stabbed with a little bitty needle wasn't likely to freak me out. It didn't. Barely registered and then when I looked down, there was already a gold hoop slipped through the hole, bead fastened into place.

Hiraku was shucking off his gloves and placing them in the trash. "Simple rules. Keep it clean, don't touch it too much. Don't let anyone else touch it and keep anything tight off it. Oh and lastly, don't take the damn thing out."

Sounded simple. I sat up and dropped my shirt back over it again. "Thanks."

He still had his back to me, tidying up all his things. "No prob. Though, if the shinigami do come knocking on our door to kill us, I'm sending you a bill."

"Deal."

Lisa and Hitsugaya were waiting for us in the front of the shop. Hitsugaya was carrying my backpack and zanpakuto looking anxious until he saw me, then he relaxed, a fraction anyway.

"I told you she was fine," Lisa said exasperated.

"Vice Captain Kusajishi?" Hitsugaya waited for my affirmation.

We were back to titles? The happy drug trip must have been over. "I'm fine, Captain Hitsugaya."

Hiraku smirked at the exchange and then turned to address Lisa. "And I'm in love."

She rolled her eyes. "You're always in love."

"Doesn't make it any less true." He sighed. "Hiyori and Urahara still at it?"

"Every time they lay eyes on each other."

"Some things never change." Hiraku turned to bow properly to me and the captain. "Thank you so much for visiting our humble shop. We appreciate your business and hope you recommend our sterling reputation and fine work to your friends... seeing as how we must abandon our very lucrative side venture on your say so."

I inclined my head in return and smiled. "Thank you, Hiraku-san and I will."

He looked up at me through his bangs, still bowed at the waist. "And don't forget what I said."

"Clean, no touchie. I remember."

Hiraku chucked. "I meant the other, but that too." He gave me another wink and then was gone back through the curtain.

"Make your getaway now, while Hiyori is still distracted and doesn't have time to plan an ambush in the alley," Lisa suggested.

I nodded, grabbed Hitsugaya and made the getaway. It sounded like the perfect idea to me.

"What the hell was all that, Kusajishi-kun?" Hitsugaya asked as soon as we were clear. Yup, everything was back to normal there.

Bizarre, that's what it had been, but 'what the hell' covered the whole thing quite nicely. "Hey, we got a fight, they're quitting and I'm pretty sure you murdered an entire box of donuts. I call it an over all victory."

A/N: Gah, this was a really cluttered but I got through it with a minimum of damage, I hope. Next is a scene I've been looking forward to from the very beginning of the story. If you want the soundtrack ahead of time, go find the song 'Pressed Against the Sky' by The Toadies. If you already have it or know it, I love you.


	12. Chapter 12

A/N: Sorry about the long pause between chapters. I had some serious computer issues and then when I thought all was well and went back to work, I had another glitch and lost half of what I'd written. The worst. I can never rewrite things as well as I did that first time. Bah, but the show must go on.

~*~

Night had fallen while we had been in the visards' piercing shop and the weather had taken a turn for the worse. It was one of those nights that wasn't quite dry enough to be foggy or wet enough to be rain. The clouds had settled somewhere in between and were lazily dragging themselves along the ground. Streetlights made hazy spots of orange glow at regular intervals, but everything else was murky darkness.

I defy anyone to not get lost in that. Not that we were exactly lost, because we weren't. We were more or less just walking back aimlessly.

Neither if us had said much since we'd started walking. I for one, couldn't think of anything to say. It happens more than you might think. That, and I like the way quiet feels with Hitsugaya. Somehow it's more peaceful than just regular silence.

His hand slipped into mine in one of the dark places. I tightened my fingers around his gently and murmured, "That's my sword hand. If we get attacked, it's going to slow me down."

I could hear the laughter in his voice as he whispered back, "I'll risk it, and I'll remember to put it in my report, to explain the slow response time."

My shoulder leaned against his and once again, I marveled at the feeling of warmth in the skin of his hand, contrasting with the coolness around him. "I'm sure Yamamoto's seen worse in reports."

Hitsugaya cleared his throat. "Yes, you weren't there at the captain's meeting the time Captain Kyokaru's entire division missed a emergency drill and his excuse was that he was asleep at the time."

I was surprised. "Nanao-kun didn't wake him?"

"Ah... she was also _asleep_, at the time."

"Oh." That was... uniquely Eighth division. Then again, almost every division had their quirks. You just had to accept the eccentricity and go on. I frowned. "So tell me again why you go so overboard on the whole perfect captain thing?"

I thought he wasn't going to answer. We had already covered this before. "I hold myself to a higher standard than that."

"Perfectionist," I accused with a smile.

"What's wrong with that?"

"Life's messy, life's imperfect," I replied. "If you are so worried about making mistakes, you miss out on the fun and the mess. It can lead to better things than the 'right' things. Where would I be if Ken-chan had stopped to think he had no business picking up and carrying around a baby?"

"I'll give you that one," Hitsugaya conceded. "And it is a good theory actually. One I suppose I could use more of in my life."

He'd just said what I wished for the world. Everyone should just take a step back every now and then. Stop taking things so seriously. Find some joy in the simple, in the random. "Everyone could."

Hitsugaya stopped walking just under one of the streetlights, leaving us in the center of one of those perfect circles of milky sodium light. I turned to ask what was wrong, caught before I could even say a word by his lips on mine, his hand on my waist, holding me close.

I was being kissed. Captain Toshiro Hitsugaya was kissing me. I was speechless, but yes, a perfect example of going with the flow and seizing the random.

In the span of my life, many people have suggested that the only sure fire way to keep me from talking, some say incessantly, is to keep my mouth otherwise occupied. This has been accomplished with candy, sweet rolls, various food and drinks. It has been less successfully tried with drugs and on one very memorable occasion something called duck tape. None of those things, on any occasion had ever stopped my internal voice from nattering along.

For one long, silent moment, I was frozen, still and silent, inside and out. Pressed against the tenth captain, in the middle of a human world street, I was stopped in my tracks.

Then of course, my brain caught up. I was being kissed. Was I supposed to do something back? Wasn't there something to do with tongues? How did that happen? Were there protocols?

Just when I had begun to panic, the rest of me caught up and I _felt_. Fluttery, weak, hysterical, euphoric, giddy and utterly devastating. It was like one of those singular moments in life that you remember how you felt forever. Like the first time your zanpakuto spoke to you, or in a fight where you discovered you might not win. It as being thrown up in the air higher than you can imagine, knowing you'll land safe in Ken-chan's arms every time.

I clung to him, half desperate that he not get away before I was done feeling all of that. Before I got the chance to kiss him back and find out exactly what all you could do with kissing. One of my hands was buried in his hair, holding tightly as my eyes closed, mouth moved on his and yes, there was things to do with tongues. They were excellent things.

Finally, there was breathing to consider. Our lips parted and I was suddenly aware of our surroundings again. It was cold. When I opened my eyes, the misty rain wasn't misty or rainy anymore. Instead, as far as the streetlight extended around us, there were fat, impossibly large snowflakes falling. They were huge fanciful ones, like you'd see on the front of a postcard.

Looking up, I watched them continue to fall and tangle in our hair, and Hitsugaya's eyelashes as he watched me. I met his eyes and let out a breath, caught in just how blue-greeny they really were.

"I really haven't made a great impression the past couple of days, have I?" He asked ruefully.

"What do you mean?" I rubbed my nose with the back of my hand. I think it was getting numb.

"The visards, the mission... everything," he sighed. "The plan was to get you alone, prove myself to you and... impress you with... something. Make you see me as an acceptable suitor. Instead, everything that can go wrong has. We've been interrupted by everything at every turn, I was drugged, you fought a visard while I ate donuts... I finally get the chance to kiss you and I completely fail to keep my reiatsu under control."

I blinked a few times to make sure he was done. "So?" I asked when I was sure he was.

"So?!?" He stared at me dumbfounded.

"You've made an impression," I answered, lightly touching his jaw. "Seems like a pretty good one to me."

"But..."

"But nothing," I answered. "I've never paid all that much attention to you before. I didn't know all the things about you that I know now." It all seemed really simple to me. I didn't know why he'd make such a big deal out of it.

"What could you possibly know now that's favorable?"

The snow was turning back to drizzly stuff and the air around us was warming back up to the way it was before. He was concentrating again. It must be a real pain to have to put so much effort into keeping his reiatsu contained all the time. Not that I didn't know personally. I did. I kept mine all nice and mostly tidy... most of the time. But I didn't pee icicles if I forgot.

"You watch the stars. You can lose an argument and go along with my plans." I stopped, thinking about the next things on my list, searching for words. "I can close my eyes around you and just for a moment, feel normal and relax."

Hitsugaya looked perplexed. "You do that all the time around Captain Kenpachi and the others in the eleventh squad, don't you? You're always relaxed and so... carefree around everyone."

"Ken-chan doesn't count," I laughed. People had the weirdest ideas about our relationship, and it wasn't something either of us could explain. "And there's never anything very normal about me. But that's okay, for the most part."

His shoulders were still set stiffly, braced for defeat. Time to try to explain this in a different way. "Hitsugaya-kun," I said softly. "I knew you were a perfect captain. I knew you could lead a textbook mission in the human world and I know you are an accomplished fighter. You never had to prove those things to me." My fingers seemed to seek out his cheek and hair all on their own. "Those were never things in you favor in my mind."

Hitsugaya looked even more befuddled.

"If I wanted the perfect captain, I'd be chasing Byakushi," I laughed.

Ouch, wrong thing to say. His jaw clenched, his eyes and his reiatsu flared in anger. I held up a hand in a hurry to stop whatever he was about to say. "What I meant was that I want a _good_ captain and a better person."

The dangerous glint in his eyes faded, and I could breathe without seeing it again. "So you're saying that it's good that fail to meet my own self-set standards."

I had to consider that for a moment. "Maybe so."

He shook his head with that now familiar expression of amazed amusement. "You really are crazy."

I nodded happily. "Mmhmm!" I tugged on his hand and turned in the direction of Urahara's shop. "So come on. Let's get back and go home."

Hitsugaya dug his heels in. "Kusajishi-kun."

I waved my free hand over my shoulder. "Nope. We're done. No more talking. You've made my head hurt as it is."

"No really, Kusajishi-kun. You're going the wrong way."

I stopped, looking back at him. "Oh... right. I'll follow you then."


	13. Chapter 13

A/N:My goal is now to finish this by the end of the month. Wish me luck guys. I am so behind where I thought I would be.

~*~

"So... what exactly are you going to tell the big boys when you get back?" Urahara asked around the bag of ice gingerly pressed against his nose. it seemed that there had been blows exchanged between him and his former Vice Captain after we had fled... erm, left.

Hitsugaya was packing away his gigai and preparing to go back to the Seireitei. "I'll tell them exactly what we discovered, what happened and what steps we took to make sure that the arrancar don't get anymore gigais until they handle the problem."

I stood next to them, my arms crossed. I'd already turned my gigai in and packed my bags. "There has to be more to it than that! If that's all you say, then they're just going to send back someone to hunt them down! And we know where they are! That's not fair at all."

Urahara moved his head in a sound of slushing ice. It was probably a negative shake. "They were scrambling the shop when I left. They're already gone."

I smiled triumphantly. "Good! That's something at least, but Central 46 should just let them go on this. They didn't really hurt anything."

"That we know of," Hitsugaya added doubtfully. "It's not our place to decide these things. That's why Central 46 exists."

"Ken-chan says that Central 46 wouldn't know their asses from holes in the ground if they came out of their cave long enough to look at them."

Urahara muffled a choked snicker behind his ice pack. "I really do like this Kenpachi. He has a certain style the one in my day lacked."

Hitsugaya clenched his jaw. "While I'm not qualified to comment on the trends in Kenpachi's, I can say that I know exactly how this mission is going to be handled from here on out."

A timer dinged on the table in front of them.

Urahara staggered to his feet. "Time for the gate. They had to rephase it to let living creatures pass."

Hitsugaya looked at him suspiciously. "There's just us. No Ryoka are going with us."

"Nope, just some mangy looking little fish."

That stopped me. "Fish? Byakushi's prize winning koi that he's been on a waiting list for THREE YEARS to get some babies?"

Urahara and Hitsugaya both looked at me doubtfully.

"Are there any fish worth waiting that long for?" Hitsugaya asked.

"Don't know. I peeked in the box and it's bags of some sad looking orange and black spotted minnow looking things. Wouldn't even make decent sushi if you asked me." Urahara shrugged. "I just know you're taking them through the gate with the rest of the captains' crap." Then he perked up and grinned brilliantly. "And distributing it all, naturally, as part of the fee for staying here and what have you."

The Captain looked more than a little put out. "We have more pressing issues than delivering the shopping."

"It'll only take a bit, and it would be a shame if I was less than attentive to what happened to your gigais..."

Toshiro gritted his teeth, but the temperature held. "Fine. Kusajishi-kun, could you take care of that while I go to speak to Yamamoto-sama when we return? Matsumoto can help you."

"But I wanted to talk to Yama-sama too!" I would not pout. I would not pout. There might have been a little pouting, a little kitten power, but it didn't work. Kitten fail. If I hadn't known that it was very nearly invincible, my ego would have suffered.

"Get the fish."

Dammit, his autocratic tendencies could be annoying.

~*~

I was right about the fish. Byakuya was waiting at the gate for us looking as close to antsy as possible for someone showing no emotion. He took the box from me with great care and bowed over it gravely. "Thank you Yachiru-kun. You must come see them as soon as they are settled."

I bowed back but ruined it with my usual lack of graces. "You're welcome, Byakushi. And feed Bubbles for me tonight! I'll be by tomorrow." Bubbles was the poor unfortunate pink koi I had given him years ago in apology for stealing a few fish.

While I was watching Byakuya hurry off to gloat over his fish in private, I felt a very familiar reiatsu wash over me. I didn't have to look, I just turned and launched myself in it's general direction. "Ken-chan!"

His arms wrapped around me as he caught me with a mock grunt. "What they feed you over there, brat? Rocks?"

All propriety was forgotten and I hugged his neck as tightly as I could, my face buried in his neck. I was home. "Missed you."

He grinned bouncing me once. "Did not. Hit me dead on." He didn't say it, but I heard it anyway. He missed me too.

I felt his posture change and I let go, sliding to the ground to see what was going on. Ken-chan and Hitsugaya were looking at each other right over me.

"I see you brought her back looking worse for the wear," Ken-chan started. "Funny thing though, you don't have a scratch on you."

Hitsugaya sighed. "I know and I can explain."

I waved a hand in front of him to get Ken-chan's attention. "It was the sweetest thing. He let me fight the visard all by myself!"

"Visard?" Ken-chan looked intrigued. "How was that?"

"Kinda boring, now that I think about it," I replied.

Hitsugaya boggled at me. "Boring? How was that boring?"

"Well she wasn't trying very hard. I've heard that visards are tougher than that. Strawberry's better that that. And _he_ knows how to do witty banter when he fights."

"No banter?" Ken-chan looked disappointed. "That's too bad."

"There's always the chance of a rematch, depending on what Central 46 decides." Hitsugaya ran a hand through his hair.

I sighed. He was probably right and while I had no arguments again fighting the little demented unicorn again, I didn't want them captured or punished or more than likely locked up and put to death. The others seemed all right to me.

Kenpachi grunted. "Central 46 can't tell their..."

A hand clamping around my wrist in my vice-like grip cut him off. Its mate extended out in front of me fingers wiggling in the universal 'gimme' gesture. "Please excuse me for interrupting what I am sure was intricately astute summary of the Soul Society's ruling body, but this will only take a moment of your Vice Captain's time, Captain Kenpachi. She has only to hand it over and I will leave you to your scintillating conversation."

Did I mention that one of those wriggling fingers had a four inch long black fingernail? I had no idea what he was on about though. I didn't think I had stole.. er, borrowed anything from him lately. "Hi, Captain Spookybutt. What did you want?"

Captain Kurotsuchi made that little annoyed tsk sound of his and shook me by the arm. "I have told you countless times to stop referring to me in those vulgar ways."

Before I had the chance to complain, form a response or get my arm back, the temperature dropped far enough I was sure whoever was closest to Hitsugaya got frostbite. "Get. Your. Hand. Off. Yachiru. NOW!" He snarled.

Ken-chan looked like he was enjoying himself and crossed his arms over his chest, perfectly content to watch for his own amusement. I gave him a very unamused look. He might know I could wriggle my way out of most any situation with Kurotsuchi, but most everyone was seriously weirded out by him.

Pulling my hand free with a deft twist, I patted Hitsugaya's arm. That would be the one clenched on the handle of his zanpakuto. "Okay, everything's fine..."

Captain Creepy was watching us both with narrowed eyes and a weird little smirk. "Well well... It seems our young captain has finally reached puber..."

"Hey!" I cut in loudly. If I was blushing, Hitsugaya had to be about to die or bust a vein in his head. There was no way I could look at him to see which. "What did you want?"

"Ah yes," Kurotsuchi said smoothly, back on track. "Akon tracked your entrance through the gate and deduced that you returned with one of the artifacts that we were having trouble with."

We had? It was news to me. "Um..."

He pulled out a weird box looking thing with a probe and aimed it at me. Weird, but not too menacing. Hitsugaya was still twitching and looking a little too protective for my likes. "My readings indicate it's on your person now," Creepy continued.

"My person?" Still no clue.

The probe was about an inch away from my midsection making come kind of tweeting noise.

"Oh," I said weakly.

Hitsugaya scrunched his eyes up. "Oh. I knew that was a really bad idea. I should have known why."

Hand extended and wriggling again in anticipation, Creepy blinked at me. "So hand it over you infuriating brat."

Ken-chan was giving me a perplexed look. Creepy still looked expectant and a bit put out. I exchanged a glance with Hitsugaya.

"I'll get Matsumoto to deal with the packages from Urahara's. You deal with... the artifact."

I nodded, a little relieved to fall back on an order. "Yes Captain Hitsugaya."

He turned and flash stepped off in the direction of his office.

Ken-chan arched a scarred eyebrow at me. "Then I'll get an explanation and debriefing from my vice captain?"  
|

Hm, there was the whole problem of diverting Ken-chan's attention for a while. "Right after you take care of planning my welcome home barbecue."

"A barbeque?" Ken-chan asked, sounding like he was already warming to the idea.

"And now if we are all done planning our pointless recreational rituals of excess, there are important matters to be attended to," Kurotsuchi complained, flustered at being ignored.

"Oh all right, Captain Caterpillar, but you're not keeping it. It's mine!"

"I really must protest this inappropriate nickname issue. You know that you are allowed to call me Captain Kurotsuchi or even Mayuri-sama but this is..."

I tuned him out and winked at Ken-chan, digging a package out of the pile and tucking it in my robes. "Uh huh..."

"Wait," Creepy scowled. "What was that?"

"Just something for one of your squad. Might as well deliver it while I'm over there."

"You really do lack all common sense of what is important and what is not."

"So they say," I answered. "See ya later, Ken-chan. Don't forget to call the Shibas and get a pig!"

Ken-chan smiled and raised a hand in a wave, watching me skip alongside Kurotsuchi as he huffed and grumbled off toward his labs.


	14. Chapter 14

A/N: Sorry it's been so long since I wrote anything on this one. It's kind of been back burnered but honestly it will be finished SOMEDAY. Just not sure when.

I caught myself folding my hands behind my back as I walked into Creepy's lab. Old habit. I'd learned to keep my hands to myself after a few mishaps. One of those had resulted in a fire and some radiation. Another had made Creepy turn all puddle of goo and sulk for days. I knew better than to touch anything now, but the impulse was still there. Hands behind my back. Do not touch.

We passed through the monitoring room, Akon was hard at work reading a magazine at his desk behind the monitors, unlit cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

"Hey Nut-head. Catch." I took the pack of cigarettes out of my robe and tossed it to him.

He caught it without looking up and put them on the desk, then opened a drawer and set a candy dish on the desk next to them. I grabbed a couple of pieces as I passed and tossed them in my mouth. Nice that they still stocked for my visits. I didn't invade... er, visit as often as I used to.

Creepy gave me a dirty look but kept right on going where ever he was going. Which turned out to be a lab room I had seen before, though the machines looked different from the last time I had been there. He pointed to a table and then crossed his arms. "Show it to me."

I untied my obi, shrugging out of the top part of my uniform and hiking up my Hello Kitty undershirt. It was worth it. For a moment, Spookybutt's eyes went wide and then he frowned at the happy kitty. "That is hardly standard shinigami issue."

I eyed his purple poofy collar and hopped up on the table, swinging my feet idly. "Nope."

Then, he was all business. He poked and prodded and waved various things at my belly button. Not very interesting if you ask me. Honestly, his muttering was more interesting, at least the parts not about me being stubborn and irritating. Of course, then we can to the questions phase.

"You said that this was inserted into your gigai?"

"Yup," I answered. "And he told me then that I'd keep it when I came back." I'd already answered twice, but that was how we played this game.

"And there was no kido or incantation?"

I thought about it for a moment, then shook my head. "I think I would have noticed incantations. Could have done it without one though. He is a former captain."

His eyes narrowed slightly and then he smiled. It was his not nice smile, as if he had another one. "Hiraku?"

I nodded. "Yup. He seemed all right. Unicorn girl was a real pain though."

Spooky looked thoughtful as he followed along. Surprisingly, he gets my nicknames better than most people. Maybe he really is that smart. "That would have been?" He made a gesture about unicorn girl high. "Pigtails?"

"Hiyori," I answered, getting bored of the whole thing. He had to be done with anything he needed me for.

He gritted his teeth and looked thoroughly pissed off out of proportion. "Yes, that would explain certain things very well." He took another few sets of readings with his stick on a box and then had me lay down and pointed a big humming box at me for a while.

I got a nap in. I woke up when Spooky and Nut-Head were looking at some kind of colored pictures tacked to a wall and arguing.

"But that's akin to using bankai to swat a mosquito!" Captain Spookybutt was pacing and throwing his arms out dramatically. "Even she could hardly be that stupid."

Nut crossed his arms and gave him a look that said whoever they were talking about very well could be.

"It's absurd!" Creepy continued, working up to a good rant and stomp fest.

"What is?" I sat up and stretched wanting to cut him off if I wanted to get out of there any time soon.

Nut nodded to my stomach. "Hiyori ripped off Urahara's technique to implant things in people's souls. At least to a certain degree."

"And while I have no problem building off techniques developed by others," Mayuri continued without a pause. "I would at least expect it to be done correctly. That little... hack! She was always a terrible lab assistant!"

Never mind. He was going to go off no matter what. I jumped down and pulled the top of my uniform back in place. "So I can go?"

Nut-Head eyed his boss. "There is a problem with the artifact."

"There is?" I sighed.

Creepy squared his shoulders and I could see lecture mode coming. I sat back down as he clasped his hands behind his back and started pacing in front of me. "Are you familiar with the archaic bait the Quincies used to draw hollows?"

"Nope."

He looked perturbed and glanced at Nut.

Nut sighed. "Long story short, it attracts hollows with a sort of reiatsu emission."

"What's that got to do with me?" I had a sneaking suspicion, just wanted to hear them say it.

"It would appear due to my former subordinate's lack of finesse, so does that thing you are wearing."

"That's a problem?"

Nut looked amused. "Hollows hunting you down to tear you limb from limb won't be a problem, will it?"

"I'll keep it in mind." I jumped off the table again. "Might be handy."

They exchanged a look that clearly said they thought I was crazy. Whatever. Ken-chan might think it was cool. If hollows came to us, we wouldn't have to go looking as often. If they were pissed off, they might be a good fight when we did find them. I was missing the problem or downside.

Just then, a very nervous looking messenger came looking for me. "Message for Vice Captain Kusajishi from Commander General Yamamoto."

Eep, I'd never gotten one of _those_ before. Nut and Spookybutt suddenly got very busy with other things and ignored us completely. I squared my shoulders and thought like Vice Captain. "Carry on."

"The Commander General requires your written report of the mission you and Captain Hitsugaya performed in the world of the living with all haste, to be delivered to him by this evening, so the proper course of action can be performed at the earliest possible time."

I had expected to have to write a report. I didn't think there would be an as soon as possible clause on it. I nodded. "Message received." I shooed the messenger off and grimly started off to write my report. I wanted to get it done even sooner than possible because I wanted to compare notes with Hitsugaya before he finished and turned his in. And knowing Snowball, he was already hard at work on the second draft.

"Hey," Nut-Head called out behind me. "And next time you think about body modifications, come see the professionals! We'll hook you up."

Yeah, that wasn't creepy at all.


End file.
